Kristallnacht: In His Own Words
Stephan Lewy shares his experience with SPI
Stephan was 13 years old, living in a Jewish orphanage in Berlin on “The Night of Broken Glass,” November 9, 1938.
In his SPI recording, Stephan Lewy (1925-2021) recounts his experience as a child in Nazi-occupied Europe. His is a harrowing story of life amid the horror of Nazi rule, culminating in an escape that took him from Germany to France and finally to the United States. In his later years, Stephan devoted himself to visiting schools and speaking to students about his experiences to help ensure that the atrocities of WWII would never be forgotten. SPI recorded Stephan’s story in 2015. As we approach the anniversary of Kristallnacht, we share his words so that this cautionary tale lives on.
IN HIS OWN WORDS: On the night of Kristallnacht “they took the kids – we were roughly 50 girls and 50 boys – and they put us into the synagogue. They couldn’t torch it because we had gentile people living on the other side. So, above the arc, there is an Eternal Light burning in every synagogue, 24-hours a day, 7-days a week. And ours was a gas-fired light. What they did, they cut the gas line to the Eternal Light, let the gas escape. We were all sitting in these seats – 100 kids. They walked out and locked the doors and walked away, hoping that we would suffocate. Fortunately one of the boys who probably was about 14 years old, he had enough sense to take a chair and break some windows.”
Click here to listen to Stephan’s story. SPI’s collection contains the first-person accounts of numerous Holocaust survivors who lived in Germany, Belgium, Lithuania, and Hungary as children. To access the page, click here. SPI stories are archived at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., the Library of Congress, and other libraries and museums throughout the country.
After arriving in the United States, Stephan, then 18, joined the U.S. Army and returned to Europe to fight the Nazis as a Ritchie Boy. He was present in Normandy following the Allied invasion and was with General Patton at the liberation of Buchenwald.
Stephan was a tremendously kind and thoughtful man whom I was honored to call my dear friend. Without a certain measure of irony, Stephan died on the anniversary of Kristallnacht in 2021.
Shown (l-r): The children living at the Baruch Auerbach Jewish orphanage in Berlin 1930s; the orphanage, the Auerbach Orphanage Synagogue, where the Nazis attempted to kill the children; Stephan as a seven-year-old in the yard of the orphanage; Stephan as a soldier in the US Army when he was a member of the Ritchie Boys.
Stephan shared many of his personal photos with SPI. They are of significant historic value. Teachers interested in sharing additional images with their students are encouraged to contact us.
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